Easy DIY lower ball joints on a 2000

[5 Speed]

After reading that a few of the older Tundras were having lower ball joint problems, call me paranoid but with over 130K on the truck and traveling for sometime on a road trip to Alaska overloaded, not intentionally, I needed the peace of mind so I ordered some lower ball joints to replace on my 2000 tundra. 144 bucks for both will make my sleep a lot easier. I will say the most difficult part of the work was actually removing the lower cotter pins, yes I know this sounds funny but those pins were rusted and pack with mud and then salted in, so yes, that is the most difficult part of the repair work. Took a little over 1.5 hours per side and one side it was almost 40 minutes trying to get the lower pin out. I guess in hind sight I could have just drilled the pin out. I posted pictures in my gallery and if anyone is interested I could post a DIY. Again, it was really easy to do, I did have a ball joint tool in my tool box from a past little toyota repair and it was easy.

I added the steps below with torque settings.


Here is a little step by step with torque settings.

1 Straighten wheels
2 Loosen lug nuts, jack and remove wheel
3 loosen 4 ball joint nuts
4 remove cotter pin and remove ball joint large nut
5 Remove cotter pin and remove tie rod nut
6 Using ball joint tool separate ball joint from control arm
7 Remove 4 nuts
8 Remove ball joint and support upper arm
9 Swing ball joint out to access tie rod joint
10 Using ball joint tool separate ball joint from tie rod
11 Clean areas where both joints connect to tie rod and lower control arm
12 Put new ball joint into place
13 Attach 4 lower nuts to align joint
14 Attach lower ball joint nut and torque to 103 ft-lbs
15 OK to increase up to 60 degrees more to align cotter pin
16 Connect tie rod and torque to 67 ft lbs
17 Ok to increase up to 60 degrees more to align cotter pin
18 Tighten lower 4 bolts to 59 ft lbs
19 Install front wheel
20 Torque lug nuts to 81 ft lbs

Note: The toyota manual says remove the tie rod first then the lower ball joint but I did this in reverse. Because I only had the single joint removal tool and not the toyota tools, this was not possible and to use my tool I had to rotate the ball joint on the tie rod to align both and then my tool worked with ease.

You can see all the pictures in my gallery but I included one with torque settings. I would say with the correct ball joint tool and torque wrenches this was easy. I would have finished each side in 30 minutes if I would have just torqued off the cotter pins, but that is not me.

[tinik]

Nice
See, its easy to do, and i would recomend everyone to do it, if you are not sure, what condition of ball joint you have.
Enjoyed to looking at the pictures.

[MEvang]

I hate to tell you this after you went through all the trouble, but if the cotter pin is in the part your replacing you don't need to completely remove it. Get out the what you can and the you can acutely shear off the rest with then nut. It may mess up the threads, this is why I say if it's in the part your replacing. It really don't make a difference.
Mike

[5 Speed]

One last note, the new ball joints came with new cotter pins for the ball joint but the did not include new cotter pins for the tie rod ends.

[5 Speed]

FYI, I changed out my two original bilstien rear shocks today for two new HD bilstiens and it was a more difficult repair than doing the front two ball joints, in fact my hands got more dirty getting those top nuts off and I got more scratches than doing the front ball joints.

[5 Speed]

The images were removed from but I put them in my gallery for anyone needing to see the photos that went with this post

[imjin]

Hey, I recognize that Harbor Freight torque wrench!

Great writeup... I'm going to get going on this too.